Alex Baker has been a photographer for a long, long, time.

I have 2 rules of photography.
Rule one: The equipment is no more important than the artist's brush.
Rule two (this is the important one) Photography is the art of selective elimination.

My first camera was a Zeiss Super Iconta B folding 120 roll film camera that my dad gave me in the early '60s. if you know what that is raise your hand. Eventually I scraped up a few bucks to trade that classic in on a new Nikkormat. D'oh! Oh, well, I was young. I spent the next few decades working with 35MM Nikons, a twin lens Rolli, then a Bronica S 120MM SLR that usually worked, then I got tired of hauling all that iron around. I gave up trying to make a living in photography and got simple for another couple of decades with cameras that fit in my pocket and fell back on my 2 rules. Digital cameras were a natural fit for me. I sold all my darkroom equipment and never looked back. I still have a 35MM Nikon and 5 or 6 lenses and that balky old Bronica, but their shutters are still now. I have a Sony W-80 that fits nicely in my pocket, a Canon A80 that has an underwater housing and uses AA batteries which can be very convenient, a Sony W-5 Super zoom with a 3" LCD that's easy on my old eyes and a Nikon D80 that feels really sweet in my hands. The Nikon 18 - 135 zoom replaces 5 lenses I used to carry back in the day and the 70 - 300 covers the rest of my usual range and that VR is oh-so-nice. Weird - a W-80, an A80 and a D80, wooooo. Oh, rats, I forgot the W-5. Sometimes concidence is just coincidence, I guess.

I still believe it's not the equipment that makes a good picture, but the equipment is a joy nonetheless and it does help, especially with digital equipment. When it comes to pixels, more is more.

Another thing: There are a lot of fine photographers in the world and I love and admire their work. You can see a lot of them here on Smugmug.